


Apotheosis in Amber

by Mithen



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Kayfabe Compliant, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 01:39:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12332901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: A young and lonely Kevin finds himself pouring out his heart to a red panda in the zoo, with unexpected consequences for him, the panda... and the world.





	Apotheosis in Amber

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hennapixie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hennapixie/gifts).



> A birthday present for Hennapixie, with best wishes for all wonderful things in the next year!
> 
> The end of this was written before Kevin reunited with Sami this week, and I swear to God I did not alter one word of it.

“...so I didn’t have anyone to talk to. That’s why I came here.” Kevin rested his arms on the sun-warmed wood and sighed, looking down into the grassy enclosure full of bamboo and stones. “I always feel better here. And you seem to be a good listener. I’m not boring you, am I?”

In the zoo exhibit in front of him, the red panda tilted its head and blinked, then chewed absently on one clawed paw, still staring up at Kevin. It was a particularly handsome red panda, with rich auburn fur and bright white cheeks. It had wandered over and plunked down right in front of Kevin while he moped, and Kevin had found himself talking to it: about how much Rougeau’s school had sucked, about how patient his parents were, about his goals and his dreams.

“I mean, feel like such an ungrateful shit, ditching Rougeau for IWS. But IWS is the first place I’ve done anything that felt really like _wrestling_ , you know?” The red panda stopped chewing on its paw and cocked its head again, and Kevin laughed. “I guess you don’t, do you? Not much pro wrestling in the zoo. Wrestling is--” He broke off, frowning. “Well, it’s a kind of fighting. But it also feels a lot like dancing, sometimes. And now and then it feels like playing, or telling a story, when it’s really _really_ good. Like, last week against Eddie, I was like--” He mimed going for the test of strength like they had at the beginning of the match, hands gripping the air in front of him. “And it was _awesome_ because I almost threw him to the mat, but he was stronger than I expected, and when he fought back it felt really good--I know that’s weird, but it’s no fun if people don’t fight back, and when you’re evenly matched that’s the best. I mean, as long as I _win,_ ” he clarified.

The red panda tilted its head to the other side, ears flopping slightly. Then it went up on its hind legs and pawed at the air in front of it as if it were imitating Kevin.

Kevin burst out laughing. “Yeah, you got it! You could totally be a wrestler!” Unable to resist, he delivered a bodyslam to the air in front of him, and the red panda dropped back to all fours, looking startled, then leaped to a rock closer to Kevin, its whiskers bristling forward as it watched him move.

“Wrestling is the greatest thing,” Kevin said. “Like, _listen,_ when I watch Shawn Michaels wrestle it’s like nothing else matters, it’s the best thing in the _world._ ” The panda sat and watched him as he launched into a discussion of why Michaels was the best wrestler in WWF, why the senton was better than the moonsault, why a good ring entrance was so important-- “You don’t need something _flashy,_ you know? Like, I just kind of roll my neck like _this_ and everyone can tell I’m a badass.” He hadn’t ever really had anyone to _talk to_ about wrestling--the IWS kids were fantastic, but they were more interested in _doing it_ than talking about it, they didn’t care about Kevin’s opinions about Kane versus Big Show or why pyro should never be used (“Because it’s fucking _annoying_ , duh!”) But for some reason this dopey red panda was willing to listen to him, so Kevin was just going to keep talking, waving his hands around with excitement as he explained how dumb and beautiful wrestling was.

In the middle of his rant on how wrestling made him feel more _alive,_ somehow, he knew that was ridiculous but it was _true,_ the panda suddenly sprang to its feet and scampered away, and Kevin felt a disappointed pang until he realized it was climbing one of the trees and clambering out on a branch, at eye level with Kevin now. “Hey,” Kevin said, surprised, as the red panda went as far as it possibly could on the branch until the branch started to dip alarmingly under its weight. “Careful now.” It stopped and looked right at him, and for a long moment they stared at each other. 

Then its hind paws lost purchase and it slipped off the branch, causing the entire tree to shake wildly as it scrabbled not to fall. “Hey, look out, you--” Kevin waved his arms wildly as if he could somehow help, but it was no use; with a chirp of alarm the red panda tumbled to the ground, sprawling on its back and looking up at Kevin in comical dismay.

“Are you okay?” Kevin called down as the panda sat back up, shaking dust off itself and looking annoyed. Then he felt stupid, checking in on a red panda. A couple of kids were looking at him funny, and Kevin felt his cheeks warm: he looked like an idiot, talking about wrestling with an animal in the zoo, like he didn’t have anyone else to talk to. “I have a lot of friends!” he announced to the air. “I’m going to go hang out with them now!”

He turned and walked off, but couldn’t help glancing back one more time at the red panda enclosure. The panda was sitting on its haunches on a rock, gazing after him. When it saw Kevin look back it bobbed its head a few times, and without thinking Kevin lifted a hand in a wave to it.

And then he went home to do his chores and practice his entrance.

* * *

“Kev! Hey! We’ve got kind of a… situation,” Manny, the IWS promoter, said as Kevin entered the bar the next night. His eyes flicked nervously left and right. “An… infestation, I guess.”

“A what?” Kevin could hear a bunch of people chattering out near the ring.

“It’s kind of a… red panda,” Manny looked like he wasn’t sure if there was really a panda out there or if he’d just done way too many drugs.

“A _what?_ ” Kevin charged out to the ring to discover that indeed, there was a red panda sitting on a ringpost, watching as a gaggle of wrestlers stared at it. Not just _any_ red panda, either--the markings were exactly the same as his, uh, friend from the zoo. “What the _hell?”_ Kevin said.

At the sound of his voice, the red panda went up on its hind legs with its paws in the air in a perfect impression of delighted surprise, dropping its jaw to smile at him. Then it scampered across the top rope with flawless agility and threw itself at Kevin.

Too startled to even flinch, Kevin stared as the panda landed on his shoulder with a solid _thump_ , claws digging in just enough to keep its balance. Kevin got a faceful of tail and sputtered as the panda chirped happily and draped itself over his shoulder. “What the--hey,” he said, trying to pull it off him, “stop it.” The panda squirmed and wriggled out of his grasp, swarming around his torso as if he were a tree, and Kevin started giggling helplessly. It ended up on his shoulder again, resting its chin on the top of his head as if ready to take on the world with him, and Kevin felt a sudden glow of happiness kindle inside him. _He found me. He came and found me._

“ _Why do you have a fucking panda, Kevin?_ ” Manny inquired at the top of his lungs, and Kevin jumped. 

The panda made an angry _chirruping_ noise at Manny, and Kevin automatically put a hand up to pat at its hackles, feeling them smooth beneath his touch. “Look,” Kevin said, “can I borrow the office phone? I guess I’d better call the zoo.”

He felt kind of like shit doing it, especially when the panda threw itself on Manny’s desk and gazed tragically at Kevin as if it knew what he was about to do. “I appreciate you breaking out of panda prison to see me again, I really do,” Kevin said as he looked up the zoo number. “But I’ll get in so much fucking trouble if they think I stole you or something.”

But weirdly, the lady at the zoo insisted that there were no missing red pandas. He even made her go out and count them, and when she came back to the phone, angry and annoyed, and insisted they were all in the enclosure, Kevin just stared at the panda sitting on the desk. It had gotten into the pens and was gleefully knocking them onto the floor, making a mess of Manny’s paperwork. “No reason, I’m--I’m sorry,” he said hastily as the zoo lady started to demand to know why he was prank calling them, and hung up the phone.

And that was how IWS came to have a pet red panda.

It wasn’t vicious, but it wasn’t particularly friendly to anyone but Kevin, so somehow it became Kevin’s. There was sharp debate as to what to name it; Kevin had a name in mind--he didn’t know why, it just felt right, somehow--but then someone made a joke about how it looked a little like a masked luchador, and after some laughter somehow it was called El Generico, and since everyone called it that, Kevin just went with it as well. He wasn’t sure how to explain it to his folks--they’d been pretty patient about the wrestling, but he was a little afraid a luchador-panda might be pushing it too far--so he kept him in the shed behind the house and sneaked him fruit; most nights, however, he’d wake up to hear him scrabbling up the drainpipe and clambering into his room to curl up at the foot of his bed, warm and solid. That was fine with Kevin. Sometimes they’d watch WWF shows together and Generico would listen to Kevin’s whispered opinions attentively, eyes fixed on the screen. The only disagreement they ever had was when Kevin woke one morning to find Generico nibbling on his Y2J shirt, which prompted a sharp reprimand and lecture about respecting private property. Generico had looked chagrined, but not terribly apologetic; Kevin got the impression he didn’t like Chris Jericho very much.

Other than Chris Jericho and wrestling promoters, there wasn’t much Generico didn’t like. He loved a lot of things: apples and hissing at Manny and climbing up Kevin’s sweats to sit on his shoulder and maybe even Kevin himself, but he loved wrestling most of all. He sat on the turnbuckle and watched the wrestlers practice, scampering around the ropes like he was demented after a good move. He wasn’t allowed in the ring during matches, but that didn’t stop him from sometimes hiding under the ring and appearing to shouts of glee from the drunken crowd, often to save Kevin when things got a little tight, hurling himself at some wrestler ten times his size and batting at them with his little black paws. One time he pulled off a crossbody from the turnbuckle that made Kevin gasp, his long furry body flying through the air as if he was born for this.

“I wish we could really be tag team partners,” Kevin whispered to him that night as he went back over the match. “I just don’t see Vince McMahon hiring a panda. Not even a really talented panda,” he added quickly as Generico looked up from their bowl of popcorn with a hurt expression. Mollified, Generico plunged his face back into the popcorn bowl, emerging with his cheeks bulging, and Kevin reached out to scratch him between the ears. “You know when I win the IWS title, it’ll be yours too, right?” he said as Generico scrunched up his face happily, pushing up into his touch. “I couldn’t have done it without you. You’re the best.”

Generico reached out with a paw to pat his face as if trying to tell Kevin that no, _he_ was the best, and life was almost perfect.

* * *

And then he finally won the IWS title and life _was_ perfect, he was the fucking _champ._ He lifted the title above his head and yelled as loud as he could, full of joy and triumph.

There was a commotion, people yelping and moving aside, and the crowd parted to reveal Generico, galloping at full speed from the back to hurl himself into the ring to be with Kevin, to climb up him with shrill cries of delight, panting in Kevin’s face. 

Kevin dropped the title and grabbed Generico, lifting him above his head and twirling around. “We did it!” he hollered into Generico’s furry face. “We’re the champs!” Generico grinned down at him, eyes bright, and without thinking, full of love for his panda buddy, Kevin kissed him right on top of his head, between his floppy ears.

And with no transition at all, suddenly he was lying flat on the mat with a guy on top of him. Kevin stared as the guy--a skinny, awkward-looking guy in wrestling tights and a luchador mask--squirmed a bit and threw his arms around Kevin, planting a messy, enthusiastic kiss on his ear.

“Kevin!” El Generico--because it _was_ him, it was clearly his panda--announced with joy. “Kevin _numero uno!”_

* * *

It was the weirdest fucking thing. Generico was definitely human now--or, well, something really close to human, though he still moved like a red panda and he seemed to speak only fragments of Spanish, for some reason. Kevin’s red panda was a human luchador now, and no one seemed to miss a beat at all, all the IWS guys just kept congratulating Kevin on his win and packing up for the night as if the _weirdest fucking thing in the world_ hadn’t just happened.

Generico was trying to help take down the ring, but he kept dropping things and then staring comically at his hands as if amazed to find himself with fingers. “Kevin!” he called, raising his hand in the air and wiggling the fingers at him as if to say _check out my new opposable thumb! It’s awesome!_

Kevin sidled up to Manny. “So… about Generico,” he said.

“Uh huh,” said Manny absently.

“Do you think maybe the two of us could… tag sometime?”

Manny shrugged. “I guess, if you’ve patched it up and all.”

“Patched it up?” 

“Yeah, I mean, if he’s forgiven you for jumping him in California and all that.”

“California?”

“What are you, an echo chamber tonight?” Manny glared at him. “I don’t give a shit if you tag with the little twerp, just scram.”

“Generico!” Kevin yelled across the room. “We’re gonna be tag team partners!”

Generico lit up and dropped the rope he was playing with to scamper over to Kevin and wrap himself around him. “ _Muy good,_ ” Generico announced, and Kevin had to agree.

* * *

Kevin watched as Generico fell out of the passenger side of the car and started to lope across the lawn toward the shed on all fours. “Ah, Jesus,” Kevin said, hurrying to catch up with him and grab him by the arm, pulling him upright. Generico blinked at him. “I can’t stick you in the shed now, that’d be--I just can’t,” he said. “Come on.”

Nervously, he led a tottering Generico to the door, unsure how he was going to explain this.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to. His mother came running to give him a big hug as he came in, saying “Eunice called me, her son was at the show! You’re the champ now, oh, I just can’t believe it.” She wiped at her eyes and smiled at Generico, who had sat down on the kitchen table and was looking around with great interest, scratching his bare stomach absent-mindedly. “I made you both an apple pie to celebrate.”

“Uh.” Kevin stared as Generico hopped off the table and gave Kevin’s mother a huge hug. “Mom, this is El Generico.”

She threw him a laughing glance. “I’m not _so_ overcome by emotion I’d forget _that_ , Kevin.” She put slices of hot apple pie in front of them and seemed unconcerned when Generico tried to eat with his bare hands, jerking back with small sounds of surprise each time he touched the steaming crust (“Ah. Ow. Ow.”) until Kevin finally showed him how to use a fork. His father came in for another round of congratulations, and he too seemed unsurprised to find a half-naked luchador sitting in his kitchen, beaming up at him. Small talk about daily life ebbed and flowed around the room as Generico discovered the joys of apple pie, uttering small shrieks of delight as he demolished it with his fork in his attempt to get it into him as fast as possible. Kevin just sat in wonder until his mother started gently scolding Generico for not keeping his room clean.

“His room?” Kevin couldn’t help but blurt out. “Wait, he lives with us?”

His mother and father looked at each other, then at him. “Are you feeling alright?” his mother asked, putting a hand on his forehead. “He’s been here for almost a year, ever since you left Rougeau’s school. Remember? We agreed we couldn’t just let him keep living on the streets, especially since he’s what got you into IWS, after all.” She looked alarmed. “Did you get a concussion tonight? You have to tell us if--”

“--No, no,” stammered Kevin. “I’m fine, just a little… overwhelmed.” Which was definitely true, he thought as he grabbed a blissfully pie-smeared Generico and dragged him upstairs. “People aren’t remembering things right,” he announced to Generico, “And it’s freaking me the fuck out and--”

He stopped dead in front of what had once been a spare room and was now a sea of socks and wrestling tights and pillows, with posters of Bret Hart and Lita haphazardly stuck on the wall. Generico shook his grip loose and jumped onto the bed-- _his_ bed, this was clearly _his_ room--bouncing in joy, smiling at Kevin.

“It’s not just memories,” Kevin whispered. “It’s _reality._ We… changed the world.”

“ _Amigo!”_ Generico announced. “Partner! Tag partner now!”

Kevin wandered into the room and sat down on the bed, feeling dazed. Had he done this? Had _they_ done this? In that moment of joy and love overflowing, had he made El Generico… _change?_ And reshaped the world to match? 

Generico snuggled up to him, pushing his head against Kevin’s shoulder. Kevin patted him on the head, feeling the cloth of the mask under his fingers. “So what do you look like under this?”

“No,” Generico said with a confused, inhuman head-tilt, and that was that. He was just...Generico, and the mask was part of who or what he was, apparently. Kevin didn’t much care, as long as he was here, by Kevin’s side where he belonged.

Generico draped himself over Kevin, curling around him with a happy sigh. Kevin was going to have to have a talk with him about inappropriate displays of affection now that he wasn’t a panda. He was going to have to tell him that tag team partners didn’t generally hang all over each other or crawl into their laps. He was going to have to--

Generico started snoring slightly, long fingers twitching in a dream. He whimpered a little and Kevin rubbed the back of his neck, feeling just a little fringe of curling hair under the mask. It would be coppery-red. Generico relaxed into his touch and made a small, contented noise.

Kevin would definitely have that talk about inappropriate affection sometime. But maybe not right now.

* * *

The world had changed. History had changed. Now he and Generico had had matches with CZW, with PWG--Kevin found a copy of the PWG match and watched in amazement. He had no memory of this, but everyone else did. “Do you remember this?” he said to Generico.

 _“Si!”_ Generico said with a huge smile. Then his face fell. “Kevin _no bueno,_ ” he announced, clearly disappointed that Kevin had attacked him without warning at the beginning of the match.

“Sorry,” Kevin muttered without thinking, then felt annoyed, apologizing for something he didn’t even remember doing. “But wow, the audience really loved you, didn’t they? They sang for you and everything.”

“No more fight,” said Generico earnestly, grabbing Kevin’s arm and clinging. “Partners. _Amigos._ ”

“Best friends, buddy,” Kevin promised.

And they were. They had a couple of matches against each other now and then, but mostly they teamed up, and they were better than anyone else in the world. He managed to convince Generico to stop galloping around on all fours, though his first wobbling, astonished attempts at walking like a human made Kevin laugh so hard he couldn’t stand up himself. He taught him some basic table manners--though he didn’t need many except at home in Marieville, since he was usually surrounded by wrestlers. He was never able to teach him much language beyond some scraps of English and Spanish, and Kevin was never able to break him of a habit of wriggling out of his pants at moments of high emotion. That caused some awkward scenes. And he never quite convinced him to stop hugging and cuddling all the time.

Admittedly, he might not have tried as hard on that one.

The one thing Kevin _didn’t_ need to teach him was anything about wrestling. He was a natural, sinuous and vicious and graceful all at once, and as a team they were unstoppable. They traveled all over, they got regular jobs in Ring of Honor, and as far as Kevin was concerned everything was perfect.

If now and then he caught a glimpse of something like sadness in Generico’s half-hidden eyes, or frustration as he groped for words in any language, Kevin tried to ignore it.

* * *

Generico was crying, and Kevin couldn’t stand it. He was holding his PWG tag championship belt, their first together, and there were tears falling on the metal, and Kevin would have ripped out the heart of the world itself to stop Generico’s tears.

“Stop, stop, stop crying,” he stammered, hearing panic edging his voice into something close to anger. “Why the fuck are you crying? We’re the champs, we’re on our way to the top, we’re--”

Generico looked up at him and Kevin’s heart thudded in pain. “I’m not--” Generico’s voice broke. He slapped the shining belt sharply, as if he could somehow shake words from it. “I thought-- More.”

“You’ll get more,” Kevin said. “We’ll be Ring of Honor champs, we’ll be _WWE_ champs someday, I know it, we’ll win every--”

“ _No,”_ Generico said. “Me. More--me.” He gestured at his face, fingers splayed and tense. “ _Palabra. Cara.”_

“Words? Face?” Kevin stared at him. “Are you saying--are you saying you could be…”

“More.” Generico snuffled miserably and wiped his nose on his arm. “Like Kevin.”

 _Like me._ Kevin felt it hit him in a dizzy rush: Generico could become a full person. Somehow. How? There must be a way. He thought about it in the days and weeks following, watching Generico wrestle, watching the crowd respond, and the answer was clear: love had to be the answer. His love had been enough to turn a panda into a luchador, but it was obviously going to take more than that to turn a luchador into a full human. Love. They had to inspire enough love.

He started deliberately stoking it during matches, getting the audience more and more involved: the hottest tags, the best celebrations, the most emotion. He poured his heart into every match, begging the audience to love Generico like he did, love him more, love him _enough._ And now and then he’d catch a flicker of something in Generico’s eyes, in the way he moved, a hint of something settling into place… but it was never quite enough, it always slipped out of reach at the last second and left him frantic and frustrated, groping after that epiphany. He thought for sure it would happen when they won the Ring of Honor belts: all that excitement, all that joy. But it didn’t.

 _They love him more when he suffers than when he succeeds,_ he realized one day as Generico struggled to reach him and make the tag, the crowd mad with desire to help him. Generico’s fingers yearned toward him and he cried out, “Kevin, _help,_ ” in a voice that made Kevin’s heart turn over, desperate and pleading and _almost free of accent,_ but then the moment passed, Kevin felt it slip away even as his fingers touched Generico’s and he came into the ring.

_Kevin, help._

He was trying. He was _trying._

They needed better enemies, obviously. They needed rivals who would be vicious enough, who would be cruel and unrelenting and make Generico suffer until the audience’s love overflowed and filled his soul and made him human. But none of the Ring of Honor tag teams were any good, they were all flaky and unreliable. The Briscoes got injured, Age of the Fall was too busy being pretentious, the Wolves were just _dull._ None of them had the brutal sadism it would take, the focus, the _determination_ to make Generico _real enough_ to the audience.

His knee hurt more every day. He was so tired. They lost the titles and were wretched, and it still wasn’t enough. He limped along, growing ever more furious and miserable: _why won’t you fuckers love him enough? Just look at him! He’s the most lovable thing in the world, and he needs you, and you’re letting him down!_

Until finally his body couldn’t take it anymore, and as the Young Bucks flipped around and kicked him at Final Battle 2009, he knew he was done. He couldn’t keep doing this anymore. The Young Bucks pinned him and then left--the unreliable little shits wouldn’t even stick around to make Generico suffer too, you couldn’t count on them, you couldn’t count on _anyone_ \--and Kevin started to say his farewells, started to thank everyone and say goodbye. 

He looked over and saw Generico, tears slipping out from under his mask. There was so much he wanted to say. _I’m so sorry. I failed you._ He started to say it, but Generico launched himself forward and threw his arms around him, warm and real, and Kevin felt him sobbing. _I wanted to help you!_ The thought was a wail of despair in Kevin’s head as he held his shaking friend. _But there’s no one, no one in the world who’ll torment you ceaselessly, who’ll make torturing you the center of their lives, no one who can be relied on to make you suffer and suffer and suffer--_

And then, quite suddenly, the answer came to him.

* * *

After that, things got really bad. Because he had to _mean it,_ of course, he couldn’t half-ass something that important. It had to be all of his heart and all of his world, and so he lost himself in the blood and the pain in a kind of sickened ecstasy. After a while he almost _did_ hate Generico, for looking so sad and betrayed, for standing before him with his eyes full of tears, unchanged. _Unchanged._

He became obsessed with the mask, with the stupid fucking mask. Maybe if he could just pull it off him, if he could just wrench it away--and he did once, but Generico screamed and hid his face and ran, leaving Kevin nauseated and lost, holding the scrap of Generico that he was left with. The eyeholes were empty, it was empty, it was almost as empty as Kevin was.

Final Battle 2010 was a long shrieking welter of blood, the audience’s horror congealing around them, thick as smoke. And at the end, when the chair smacked into his skull and the world went gray and dim, he thought that surely now, surely now, this couldn’t have all been for _nothing…_

But Generico was still Generico, and Kevin rolled over onto his stomach and sobbed as if his heart were broken. 

All for nothing.

* * *

There were long years of torment and misery, trapped in the patterns he’d shaped their lives into. Nothing but hatred and fear in Generico’s eyes, nothing but pain and blood between them. He couldn’t stop trying, but it was never enough. It would never be enough, he knew that now. 

He made all of Ring of Honor suffer as he had made Generico suffer, because no one deserved to be happier than Generico. He’d burn the whole world down around him.

* * *

When the news came that Generico had been signed to WWE, he started laughing and couldn’t stop until he started coughing and couldn’t stop, tasting blood at the back of his throat.

* * *

When PWG called him and up and said he’d be teaming up with Generico one last time, he couldn’t even laugh. He just stared at the mail, emotions curdling in his gut that he had no name for. He should just say no. He should tell them to fuck off, he wouldn’t be part of their sick games.

He went to Reseda.

* * *

He couldn’t look at Generico. He could _feel_ Generico’s gaze on him, pleading, but he couldn’t look up. There was nothing left in him.

Or so he thought, but as the tournament went on, he found himself caught up in the rhythm of the fight, the familiar cadences of fighting side by side with Generico. Like his body remembered it when his mind couldn’t. Muscle memory.

The heart is a muscle.

He found himself standing between the Young Bucks and Generico, keeping them from him, protecting him. Behind him, Generico made a small, startled noise, and Kevin remembered the ghost of fur beneath his fingers, the feel of his friend’s arms wrapped around him. 

“ _Amigo,”_ whispered El Generico, and everything fell back into place as if all those years of torment had never happened.

But they had.

They lost, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered but Generico holding out his hand, pleading for a handshake. The crowd wanted it, the crowd was chanting for it, and Kevin stared at the outstretched hand and turned away. He couldn’t. Handshakes were for equals, for someone you respected, and Kevin would never be-- Generico could never--

He was almost to the locker room when something seemed to finally break inside him, and he turned around and started back to the ring. Someone in the audience screamed, caught between fear and anticipation, as he threw himself into the ring, threw himself at Generico, Generico who would be gone soon, who he had lost, lost, lost in every possible way and he just wanted, one last time--

Generico staggered backwards with him until they came up against the turnbuckle together, and Kevin felt his fingers in his hair, stroking as if _he_ were the wild animal who needed soothing, and he was sobbing against Generico’s shoulder and the air was full of streamers, the air was incandescent with love and joy overflowing, with grace unlooked-for and undeserved. Generico kissed him on the forehead, just as Kevin had kissed his red panda all those years ago, and how had he ever thought he was the one who could make Generico human, when it was Generico who could make _Kevin_ more than himself, make him his best self in this moment.

There was a mic in his hands somehow, and Kevin managed to say it, to say the words he had to say: “I would be _nothing_ without you,” and it was true.

Generico looked at him, just looked at him, blinking as if his words were a flood of light, the love of the crowd coursing around them.

Blinded with tears, still shaking with grief and happiness, Kevin crouched against the turnbuckle as all the other wrestlers entered the ring to embrace Generico, as everyone sang. He tried to sing too; his voice cracked and stumbled, but it didn’t matter. Generico was handed a mic, and Kevin felt a sobbing laugh shake him: _As if Generico can give a whole speech, you idiots._

Generico stared at the mic as if at an alien artifact, then lifted it and started to speak.

To speak in whole sentences, not just fragments. 

At first the weird Generico accent was still thick in his words, and then suddenly his voice broke and wavered and was something else, something new. It was a slightly nasal voice, all Canadian, full of tears, and Kevin straightened up, staring. He was--

Generico was--

Generico took a deep breath, and Kevin saw him settle his shoulders, _felt_ him shift. Not a luchador-panda anymore, but a human being in a luchador mask.

No one else seemed to notice. But they wouldn’t, would they. Only Kevin. Only Kevin knew.

* * *

When it was all over, he slipped away and went up to the roof of the American Legion hall, sitting in the dark, wiping his eyes every few minutes. After a while, he heard the door creak open and a man in a luchador mask and tights, jacket tugged around his bare torso against the January chill, came and sat down next to him. They looked out at the lights together for a long time in silence, and then the man cleared his throat and said, “So, thank you, I guess. For everything.”

It wasn’t Generico’s voice. It was warm and a bit reedy, and astonishingly human.

“Don’t,” said Kevin. “Don’t thank me. Please.”

“I thought you… might like to see,” said the man, reaching up to unlace the mask. Kevin stared in wonder as he pulled it off to reveal hazel eyes and a nose just a bit too big to be classically handsome beneath a tousle of curling panda-red hair. He was smiling.

Kevin reached out without thinking and grabbed his chin, tilting his head toward the moonlight, taking in his face. The man didn’t flinch as Kevin looked his fill. It looked… _right._

“I don’t have a name yet,” the man said with a laugh as Kevin let him go.

“I…”. Kevin stopped. The man next to him raised his coppery eyebrows in a clear _go on_ gesture. “At first, I wanted to call you Sami. But I’m sure you can come up with a better name than that.”

“Sami,” said the man who had been a red panda and a luchador, thoughtfully. “Sami. I kind of like it.” He nodded. “That’s the right name.” He took a deep breath. “Kevin,” he said, laughing with wonder, “I have a _family._ I have parents and siblings and cousins, I have a history, I have… a whole life.”

They’d created entire people, summoned them into reality. Kevin shook his head, amazed.

“I want to talk to you,” Sami said. “ _God,_ I want to talk to you about wrestling. About everything.”

They sat on the roof and talked all the way through the night, about wrestling and about who Sami was now. He was funny and sarcastic and couldn’t seem to stop talking, he was fierce and kind and compassionate and cared about the world way more than Kevin did. He was perfect, and Kevin’s heart was filled with rejoicing that he could be a small part of this miracle.

“Will you remember?” Kevin asked at one point. “Being Generico? Before?”

Sami paused. “I don’t think so. I think it’s going to fade in a few days. When I was Generico, I only remembered life before in little flashes, now and then.” He looked at Kevin. “But I always, always remember being your friend, Kevin.”

Kevin rubbed at his eyes and cleared his throat. The sky was growing gray with morning. He looked at the pale horizon and said the thing he’d been thinking all night: “Do you think you could be… even more?”

Sami went very still, staring out at the slow-gathering dawn. “It’s… possible,” he said at last. “But it would take a _lot_ more power, a lot more love. Each shift seems to be exponentially harder.” He paused and then said again, letting the syllables roll off his tongue with relish: “Ex-po- _nen_ -tial-ly.” Kevin could feel his delight at finally having words, at finally being able to express himself. “I don’t think the same way would work. I think it would have to be… something different. A different kind of redemption. A different kind of joy.”

“I might never get to WWE,” Kevin said, and Sami bristled angrily and made a little annoyed sound, suddenly very much like a red panda.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll get there. We’ll be there together. _Never_ doubt that.”

“The world changes more each time, too,” Kevin said softly. “I wonder how much of the world would change to match… whatever you might become?”

Sami took a deep breath. “I won’t remember this conversation,” he said. “I’ll hate you.”

“No you won’t,” said Kevin. “Not really. Not deep down where it matters.” He could live with anything if he knew that.

Sami reached out and wrapped an arm around him, warm and solid and real. They sat together in comfortable silence, leaning on each other. Kevin watched the dawn touch the sky with rose and gold, and felt like he could see the future awaiting them: bright sheltering wings of amber and opal unfurling against the infinite starry sky; a mighty wind of justice and compassion making the whole world new.


End file.
